Sweat Drops

Holy bananas. We just stuck the For Sale sign in front of our house (the one in this post was photoshopped in case you couldn’t tell). Big day. So it’s official. Our house is really on the market.

We’re still in the process of doing a ton of things to woo potential buyers both inside and out (stay tuned for those details as we go) and we’re actually trying the for-sale-by-owner route… at least for a little while. Being such big DIYers it seemed odd not to give it a go (especially since my mom and dad have sold nearly every house they’ve ever owned themselves). Although we’re definitely not opposed to turning to a realtor if we don’t get much of a response in the coming weeks.

We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime we’ll be crouched down in front of the window staring at the little flier box to see if anyone stops to take our info sheet. We’re sure a lot of neighbors will grab one (after all, we do that whenever anyone else puts their house up, just to see what they’re asking and to compare our home to theirs) but we’re hoping some actual house-hunters will take notice too. Cross your fingers (and eyes) for us. Off to clean something within an inch of its life…

You just have to market the heck out of it yourself (in the newspaper, on craigslist, on forsalebyowner.com, etc). You can even pay to get it on MLS and do showings and open houses yourself. For privacy’s sake (since we don’t want the world to know our address) we’re just releasing that info to people who get pre-approved for a loan (so we know they’re the serious buyers). Then if we can get a buyer we write up a simple contract and hire an attorney to do all of the closing stuff for us (which is still a lot cheaper than a realtor). We’ll let everyone know if it works for us!

Best of luck!
I keep trying to convince my husband we should move to Richmond just to buy your house. But unfortunately he’s not budging yet. Something about having jobs and a house here or such silliness.
But the new owners sure will be lucky!

We’re just starting that process, but we’ll definitely post about it as we tour things that we like and don’t like. We’re gonna definitely keep things diary-style so you guys can see what’s going on as it happens.

There is no doubt in my mind that you guys will be able to sell your house on your own! This post alone is wonderful press :)

And staging does wonders, we sold our condo a little over a year ago, in record time for our complex, for very close to asking price, to a young couple that wanted nearly everything in it. I would bet money you guys will do the same!

OMG Good luck!!!! I know you guys will be able to find a new owner for that gorgeous house! And now you get to play around with a new one? fabulous! I can’t wait to own one day =) There’s sooo many more projects you can do when you aren’t renting (i’m on my 6th rental! eep!) so yeah… best of luck! =)

I’m sure with all your fame there will be lots of people who read your blog who will want to buy your house! Good luck selling it yourselves. I’m sure you’ll have it sold in no time (and will get to save all that $$$ by not paying a Realtor!)

Your house speaks for itself. You’ve put so much time and effort and WORK into this place that I doubt you will have any trouble selling. And on the side, I think your fame (yes, you guys don’t like to hear it but you are famous in a lot of respects) will help your house market itself. Good luck to you both and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for you guys (both on the house hunting and new home remodeling front)!

You’re lucky that you do not have to publish your address on the blog (I think it’s a very wise decision, especially for an home improvement blog), as in germany it is mandatory to publish it and you can receive a costly warning / C&D if you do not do so…

Congratulations! Would you be willing to talk about some general things that people should do when they’re getting ready to sell their house? I’m getting ready to move into my parent’s house and one of the reasons is that they need someone to make it sell ready (they are in another house). I’d love some generic tips!

While the seller does pay it,it’s still an expense that the buyer pays through a higher sale price. If you’re unrepresented and don’t say anything, the seller’s agent gets the full commission. But it’s something you can easily negotiate before placing an offer (tell the seller’s agent you’re unrepresented and you’ll only bid if they drop their commission). The seller’s agent makes the same as if they were selling to someone who’s represented by a buyer’s agent. That frees up the seller to take approximately 3 percent less.

Ask yourself if the advice you’ll get from a real estate agent is worth the 2.5% to 3% ( interest).

one little trick we tried that our buyer said she paid attention to–we wrote down all of the showings on a large calendar in the kitchen…some days we had 3 or 4 showings, and seeing that on the calendar increased the buyer’s sense of urgency to make a (more than full price) offer!

Good luck! I’m definitely interested to learn about your experience with the for-sale-by-owner process. A house on our street had an open house a few weeks ago so we stopped by…and saw two other neighbors while we were there! I’d also like to add to the previous requests to see your house flier (with all the location info blocked out, of course!).

I’m really excited to be able to watch you guys go through this process and to learn some dos and don’t for when we put our house up for sale (hopefully in May…) and buy a new one (hopefully somewhere warmer!)

Good for you! We sold ours on our own last year (DIY’ers all the way), and while it was a bit of a roller coaster ride, we are glad we did it! Only took 4 weeks (and 2 open houses) to have an offer. Good luck and just don’t get discouraged – you won’t believe the things people will say (good & bad) about your house right in front of you!!

Good luck! We are in the process of selling our place to. We sold our first house on our own and it was a great expereince but with the market so tight right now we went the route of paying to have it listed on MLS. No luck yet but we hope everyday that it changes! Keep us posted on your diy home sale efforts! Thanks!

Although I am sure you have made up your mind on doing a FSBO, I might caution you (knowing several people who have done this) that those who do a FSBO tend to quite a bit less, on average, than people who use a realtor. This tends to be for several reasons, including under-appraising the home, or the fact that many people searching for homes see a FSBO as a “deal” and underbid consistently because of this. I’m sure your presence on the web will help, but in the case that the interested buyers are non-readers, you might just want to keep this in mind. I am not a realtor, btw, just someone who just sold their house and has some experience in that area. In the long run, saving 6% on a realtor might not be that much when you look at the potential loss you might leave on the table if you do a FSBO (studies have shown that is the average loss on a FSBO is 11%). Just my 2 cents.

We actually got an appraisal on our home since we made so many improvements (which helps to show buyers that our house is worth as evaluated by a pro). We’re not opposed to going the realtor route if this doesnt work out, but since my family has done it many times and because we’re DIYers at heart we gad to try! Will keep everyone posted!

This may have already been answered in another post, but how do y’all feel about selling your house furnished? Especially if someone finds it through YHL, they may want to buy the whole kit and caboodle!